Back in the dark dark days of the Internet, there was a culture clash between Usenet and AOL over “me too”.  Now, in a social media age, “me too” has made its comeback: retweeting on Twitter, “like”ing on Facebook, +1ing on Google Plus.

Remember that culture clash?  Usenet culture had a strict etiquette, coining “netiquette” to describe it.  Netiquette was largely about saving bandwidth in the days of slow and limited dial-up access.  Read the FAQ, don’t spam, trim replies to only include relevant text, make replies meaningful.  AOL users, when first let loose out of their walled garden in the mid-90s, didn’t respect that netiquette.  The calling card of an AOL user¹ was adding “me too!” to a thread.  In nicer forums, this led to a gentle primer in netiquette, but it mostly led to the AOL user being flamed out of existence.

I admit that I was snobby about those AOL users in my Usenet days.  I failed to see the importance of “me too”.  “Me too” is an acknowledgement that not only did I hear you, but I agree with you.  It’s identifying a point of commonality, a shared point of interest.  No matter how much I want to believe I’m a special snowflake, I also want to have something in common with others.  I like learning that you read Terry Pratchett too², that you listen to Cowboy Junkies, that you think that flour+water is a great restaurant.

It’s only now that bandwidth is plentiful that “me too” has resurfaced.  The very human desire for connection is ever-present, and it’s now become acceptable in a social media world to acknowledge that need for connection in a lightweight fashion.  I don’t have to write an essay about why I love Pratchett’s novels, I can simply click a button and let you know that we have this point of commonality.

The pendulum has swung the other way.  15 years ago, I never would have imagined posting “me too”, no matter how strongly I felt that connection.  Compare that to a meeting I was in last week.  I was participating in a portfolio review of a candidate, and I asked a question contrasting one of the candidate’s statements with something they had said earlier.  The person sitting next to me looked up and said that he’d just jotted down a note that he wanted to explore that question more.  Further down the table, another interviewers raised his hand and said, “plus one”.  This prompted a couple of others to do the same.

While “me too” is important, there’s also a danger to it.  Our discourse shouldn’t be limited to simplistic statements of agreement that can be fully captured by the two characters of +1.  There are times when that essay about why I love Pratchett’s novels is not only welcome but needed.  Likewise, we need to be able to have a nuanced but respectful discussion about why we disagree on a topic.  We need to acknowledge our commonality, but such acknowledgement shouldn’t be the only communication.